The Society of Saint John the Evangelist: The Daily Office
Holy Week at the Monastery 2009
Wednesday in Holy Week
 Carrying the Cross |
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Wednesday in Holy Week Traditions
On this day, the Brothers pray the ancient monastic office of Tenebrae. Tenebrae (from the Latin for shadows or darkness) is a service that derives from the monastic services of matins and lauds. The most conspicuous visual aspect of the liturgy is the use of darkness and the gradual extinguishing of candles, until only a single candle remains, a symbol of our Lord. The service provides an opportunity for sustained reflection on the Lord’s suffering and death. This liturgy is a choral offering by the Community, with chanted psalms and canticles set to plainsong, chanted lessons from the Lamentations of Jeremiah (in which each verse is introduced by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet), responsories set to harmonized Anglican chant, and a Taizé-style setting of Psalm 51.
Holy Week Meditation
Tenebrae: God’s presence in suffering, offered by Timothy Solverson, SSJE
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the [celebration and] contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP p. 270)
Holy God
Holy and Mighty
Holy Immortal One
Have mercy upon us
Palm Sunday marked the beginning of Holy Week in our tradition—six days of solemn preparation for the Paschal Feast of Easter wherein—we remember the saving acts of God in Christ. Our Judeo-Christian tradition teaches us that God is revealed to humanity through history there is a beginning and therefore an end. From time to time God breaks into history to redeem humanity so we have the stories of Noah, of Moses and the children of Israel, of the rise and fall of the kings of Israel and later Judah culminating, in the Jewish tradition, in the exile from and restoration to the Promised Land. A long history marked by suffering, war, and loss yet under girded by a promise of salvation, a promise of God’s presence. Imbedded deep in the prophecies of Israel’s scriptures are promises of time’s fulfillment marked by abundance, freedom, and peace. Jewish men and women of the first century living under the foreign rule of Rome came to believe that God would break into history again defeating the wicked rulers and establishing the Messiah as king who would inaugurate God’s reign of peace.
Stories circulated around a teacher from Galilee who taught that the kingdom they were hoping to find was held within their hearts. This man Jesus taught that true power and life was found in self-sacrificing love. Jesus taught that love would give the people eternal life and it was found in serving the poor, healing the sick and working for the liberation of humanity from all that would keep them away from life. This message was perceived as a threat to the socio-religious infrastructure of Judea under Rome and Jesus was persecuted and ultimately tried as a criminal and executed by crucifixion. The message of Jesus of Nazareth did not end when he died but has flourished to this day because his followers insist that Jesus Christ is alive and living within their hearts. Resurrection to new life, eternal life filled with the creating power and life of the Holy One enthroned in heaven.
As the stories of Jesus circulated the number of people who somehow had an experience of the Risen Christ grew and they began to try to understand what had happened. What did the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ mean? They went back to their scriptures and began to understand that in Jesus, God was working salvation. God had broken into time in the birth of Christ and had somehow destroyed death and began the re-creation of the world through the resurrection. They saw in Jesus the fulfillment of the promise. By the fourth century the followers of Christ had permeated the known world with the message of eternal life through Jesus Christ. By the end of the fourth century the Christians had become established as the dominate religion of the Roman Empire and people were beginning to want to experience the life of Christ in a deeper way and they began to go to Jerusalem to “walk in the foot steps” of Jesus, to see the land of promise; to dwell in the places where Jesus experienced his life and even more poignantly his death. With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity large public works dedicated to further the life of the Church particularly in Jerusalem. And soon from the catechetical teachings of Cyril of Jerusalem the liturgies of Holy Week evolved. Moving from site to site Cyril sought to teach his catechumens the mysteries of Christ’s life and death before they were to be brought into the fold of the Church through their own death through Holy Baptism at the Paschal feast of Easter.
We know a great deal about these ceremonies through the writings of Egeria, a nun from northern Spain who went of pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the late fourth century, 386-400, and who wrote down everything she heard and saw on this trip. Most importantly to us, Egeria wrote detailed descriptions of the liturgies she participated in and brought them back to the West and we owe a great debt to her for from her experience we can trace the nativity of our current liturgies.
We are invited this week to participate in a corporate memory of our salvation story. We are here to remember and to experience the passion of Christ. We are not spectators but participants in a divine drama that seeks to give integrity to our humanity by hallowing the real human experience of suffering and death. We will be with Jesus Christ as he experiences the intimacy of love with his friends, and betrayal of those same friends. We will experience with him the shame of public humiliation and beating. We will suffer with him as he is tried by a mob, then mocked and tortured. We will feel his pain as he is crucified. We will experience his complete exile as he looks deep within his heart knowing he has been abandoned by every one who he has loved. We will move into his hell as he even fails to feel God—the one he knew as father. Finally we will experience his death as he is removed from the cross and buried. What utter loss—what betrayal—what holy silence—what pregnant darkness.
According to Egeria, Wednesday in Holy week was marked by a reading of Matthew 26:14-16 which is where Judas has made his agreement with the Authorities to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. She writes, ‘when the passage had been read…there is such a moaning and groaning of all the people that no one can help being moved to tears.”
During the middle ages the monastic service of Tenebrae was prayed on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Holy Week at Matins and Lauds (Morning Prayer). Today Tenebrae has been reduced to one service and serves as a prelude to the Tridium, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Tenebrae is a liturgy designed to begin to enter into the suffering of the world by experiencing the suffering of Christ. Tenebrae is meant to be contemplative and it is marked by Psalms and chants of exile and darkness which, paradoxically, draws us into the presence of God because even in the midst of this deep darkness there is a glimmer of hope. We are the people of the Resurrection. We are the children of the day. We will be removed from this vale of tears and brought into life because God is faithful. God restored Israel. God gave humanity its dignity in our creation and in our redemption through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. We know the end of the story—but before we get to the last page we will suffer.
The world suffers because humanity has forgotten how to live as beings created in the image of God. We suffer because we fail to love one another, because we fail to love ourselves. We suffer because we have forgotten who we were created to be and we substitute our birth right for things that have no life in them. Look at the prevalence of addiction, estrangement and alienation that are the plagues of our society. Look at disease we are seemingly incapable of curing. Look at the poverty of most of the world including our own neighborhoods and see how we collude with the fantasy of greed that empowers few at the expense of many. Is God present in our suffering because of our sinfulness? Jesus experienced this suffering and somehow God suffered as well. Is God present in God’s suffering? God is present, even so veiled, because Christ dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit and we become God’s presence to other’s when we suffer with them by holding the sick and the poor when no one else will do it. Fighting for justice and peace for the disenfranchised—working toward sobriety, relationship and reconciliation—God is present in our suffering because God suffers with us. God suffered with Jesus and did not truly abandon him—God suffered with Jesus the day he died. God was so outraged by the blasphemy of humanity’s disregard for humanity God tore his garments in lamentation exposing the holy of holies ripping the curtain in the temple and rocking the foundations of creation. God suffered in the death of Jesus Christ and God suffers with us. Yet we know the end of the story suffering and death are not the last page—for light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
Tenebrae is a liturgy to bring integrity to suffering, exile and abandonment of our selves and the world inviting us to experience the dark corners of our hearts within the hope and embrace of God. Tonight come to Tenebrae to sit in contemplative silence let the psalms, the responsorial and readings wash through you. Notice how you feel as we pray through the psalms. What prayer will God impregnate your heart with this week? What do you desire? How have you suffered and why?
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